Theme of Love (FF Piano Opera Ver.)
LOL I really thought I had recovered back in November, huh. I think I’ve recovered from this slump for good this time, though- I’ve been slowly working on this piece since December and I even recorded a progress video but I ended up not uploading. And now it’s done! This is a piece that I’ve had on my list for a veryyyyy long time, so I’m really glad I was able to finish it. Finally. There was one specific part that made me chicken out time and time again (more on that later), but I overcame the challenge and made it to the end!! I’m not really happy with this take but given that I haven’t completed anything in "*checks watch* 8 years, I’ll take it. This is also the piece I had done a sightreading take for back in August or something, but dropped it at the time.
Detailed Analysis
That first opening chord is actually one of the hardest moments for me. It is so critical to open with the right touch and to maintain the right balance between the unified LH and RH… learning how to roll that chord at 0:06 also took some time. I typically spend the least amount of time on intros when practicing, but not this time… I wanted to make sure that it sets the stage right for the rest of the arrangement. The chord at 0:15 is originally a full A major chord with a lower G, but obviously I can’t reach that so I modified it to exclude the lower A and move the G up to the middle of the chord. I did adjust the voicing so that the G wasn’t coming out too much- if it does, the chord sounds too dissonant. Overall, I love how jazzy this opening phrase is and for some reason it sounds amber and syrupy to me.
The main melody is introduced for the first time at 0:19 with single notes in the RH and rolled block chords in the LH. There are also high ornament octaves played with the LH in the upper register… tried to make them sound twinkly. It was surprisingly challenging to keep the RH steady as the LH is moving up and down the keyboard. Also had to get a little creative with the RH fingering to connect as much of the melody as I could. A lot of the LH chords were actually really hard!! This is something I’ve struggled with in other pieces and it came back to bite me in the butt. I put in a lot of time to make the chords as smooth as possible, but I’m still not 100% happy with it. The final broken chord at 0:45 especially is hardest, but somehow I seem to have locked down the feel while recording today lol.
We then transition into the melody again, this time with a denser accompanying part. Lots of voicing in the RH, but nothing too crazy. Mostly two-note intervals, which I’ve had a lot of practice with already. There’s a small swell at 1:01 before dying back down around 1:07. Then we enter the next part at 1:12…
Which has the LH playing bass octaves followed by blocked chords in a more march-esque feel, while the RH continue to play the second part of the melody. The LH was tricky because of the jumps and because several of the blocked chords are not as comfortable/familiar for my LH. This is probably the section I spent the least amount of time on… one of the last parts to be memorized. Nothing else too noteworthy here aside from another swell (though I think the way I edited the sound has… equalized a lot of the dynamics throughout, whoops).
The next section starts quieter at 1:39 as a reprieve from the denseness of the previous section; this is one of the phrases that made me want to learn this piece in the first place! There’s a subtle crescendo for the first half of the phrase. I was careful with voicing for the entire section, but was especially mindful from 1:52, with the most important bit being at 1:59 with the top B in the RH. The chord is originally an octave but I couldn’t reach that… so had to be creative with the voicing. I’m happy with the progress I made!
I’m really NOT happy with the RH ascending scale at 2:03 in this take because it is the worst I’ve played it in a long time… but I’ll have to live with it. It sounds so uneven… The more I replay that bit, the more I die inside… SIGH it usually sounds really good tbh!!!!!! And I put so much time into coordinating it with the LH melody!!!!!!! ARGH!!! Sigh. Well, moving on… This section is what I’ll dub the flowery arpeggiated section. The melody stays in the center of the keyboard, juggled between both hands as both hands also climb arpeggios up the keys. The jump at 2:11 is the singular moment that scared me off this piece for a long time. The RH jumps down basically half the keyboard in the space of a single triplet on top of the RH having eighth notes and triplets in one. AND the LH then takes over the melody with the lower D as both hands jump back up. It’s a lot happening in like… two seconds lol. BUT what’s important is that I managed to learn it and it didn’t even end up being that bad. I first thought maybe my hands were too small since I hadn’t thought through the specifics for fingering, but it turns out it’s just a lot of jumping. Very doable. The LH continues to take the melody for a while, and the ninth at 2:17 had to be broken for obvious reasons. 2:20 is where things reset for a moment and the spotlight gets shifted to the RH instead. I’m pretty amazed with how easily RH octaves come to me; I am not looking at my RH at all for the octaves through 2:24, even for the chord that jumps up. I can literally just feel exactly where my hand needs to go… pretty gratifying. Also allows me to focus on my LH which always needs babysitting.
The climax of the piece is at 2:29 with huge sweeping descending scales in the LH while the RH is going ham with loud octave chords. These descending scales ALMOST put me off this piece because it was just not looking good when I was first starting… but I’ve managed to get them to a point where I can fake them. Trust me, they are not perfect lol. It is pretty exciting that I play the lowest A, though; this isn’t something that I get to do often. The LH chords at 2:43 sometimes give me heartburn so I’m just glad I made it through this take without a huge pause. This small phrase was the last part I had to get through to finish the piece for a while… I just lost steam for a bit but managed to recoup my drive eventually. The RH is also kind of finnicky because the octave chord shape changes throughout… but again, RH dominance is winning because it got to a point where I could just focus on the LH jumps. The chord at 2:54 is broken because… you know why.
The piece starts to wind down at 2:58, returning to the “B” part of the melody briefly before we enter the final section of the piece at 3:18. It definitely sounds like a conclusion to me with the noble blocked chords, and then we taper down with one final arpeggio… and a really terribly played final interval in my RH but that’s… fine… sigh. And my LH thumb played way too loud on the final C in the arpeggio but AHHH I just had to live with it. At this point, I’d had so many bad takes I was like I’LL TAKE ANYTHING!! Maybe not the best choice in retrospect. But anyway, we made it to the end.
Thoughts on the Learning Process
This is one of those pieces that isn’t that complex on paper, but requires a lot of musicality to sound good. The only tricky section was probably the flowery arpeggiated one, of course with that jump being one of the more technically challenging spots. But ultimately, the hardest spots for me were the descending LH scales. It’s not something that my LH is able to do on a good day, so I had to spend a lot of time just learning the motions and getting it to a point where it sounds somewhat decent… I’m still not happy with it by the time of writing this, but it’s definitely an improvement from where I started. Actually, in my progress video from December or so, that particular take had my LH sounding SO unbalanced that it was basically the main reason I never uploaded it LOL. I still only get the fingering right about 50% of the time and I have to think really, really hard about “1 2 3 cross 1 2 3 4 cross 1 2 3, etc.” as opposed to my RH, with that one ascending scale being really thought-free. Sigh. Just more woes about my RH-dominant playing, I guess.
Other than that, I feel like I learned all the notes fairly quickly, but I started to really delve into developing the musicality of each section, which I admittedly don’t always put so much effort into. I also don’t think this recorded really captured the full range of expression (commonality with all recordings), but it’s more of a shame this time around since I did spend a lot of time fine-tuning so many sections. Oh well. Something to show off during live performances, I guess.
I took a lot more time than I think I would have in the past to go from first read to recording, but I also hadn’t been playing at all for several weeks before getting back into the groove with this piece, so honestly, kudos to me for getting to the finish line.
Conclusion & Final Thoughts
I’m very pleased with finishing this piece and for how polished I got this arrangement, but it’s too bad this take is the best I could do today. I’ll give myself an 81/100. At least all of the notes are there… but my mind was whiting out so a lot of finer details were lost. Can’t be helped.
It’s almost funny to look back and wonder why that one jump had literally scared me away from this piece for so long. It… was NOT even that bad… typical.
I want to try and keep this piece fresh in my memory so I can play it at will; it’s simple enough where it should stick in my mind with enough frequency, but I also didn’t spend THAT much time on it so we’ll see.
ANYWAY, hopefully this marks my return to finishing pieces and learning things and just enjoying piano in general. I definitely am enjoying playing again as opposed to the second half of 2022… but not sure what to learn next from here. I remembered I used to learn something easy after a more involved piece like this one, so maybe I’ll go find something easier to learn. I’m also thinking of going back to Xion’s theme once and for all, but we’ll see… I have some kind of jinx with that arrangement, I swear. And I kinda want to finish Vimara Village since I got pretty far with it.
Off topic, but I think my burnout/slump from last year made sense since I’ve been playing for nearly 6 years now almost continuously. I’m trying to think of slumps not as “slumps” anymore, but maybe just as breaks that I need to take to maintain a healthy relationship with piano (and this goes for any other hobby). But for now, I’m going to enjoy playing as long as I can before the next break!!